NOGALES, Mexico (AP) — Ana Ruiz was dismayed to see migrants from some countries released into the United States with orders to appear in immigration court while she and other Mexicans were deported on an hour-long bus ride to the nearest border crossing. .
“They are giving priority to other countries,” Ruiz, 35, said after a tearful phone call to a family in the southern Mexican state of Chiapas at the San Juan Bosco migrant shelter. The shelter’s director says he receives around 100 deportees a day, more than double what happened before President Joe Biden issued an executive order that suspends asylum processing at the US-Mexico border when arrests for illegal crossings arrive 2,500 per day.
The suspension of asylum, which came into force on June 5 and led to a 40% drop in prisons for illegal crossings, it applies to all nationalities. But it’s harder for those most susceptible to deportation — specifically, Mexicans and others Mexico agrees to accept (Cubans, Haitians, Nicaraguans, Venezuelans). Lack of money for charter flights, sour diplomatic ties and other operational challenges make it more difficult to deport people to many countries in Africa, Asia, Europe and South America.
Homeland Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas said the U.S. is working with countries around the world to accept more deported citizens, citing challenges in diplomatic relations to speed up the production of travel documents.
“The reality is that it is easier to remove individuals to certain countries than to others,” he said in an interview Wednesday in Tucson, Arizona. “We removed individuals to Senegal, we removed individuals to Colombia, we removed individuals to India. It might be more difficult.”
Mexicans accounted for 38% of border arrests in May, down from 85% in 2011, but remain by far the highest nationality. The Border Patrol’s Tucson sector has been the busiest corridor for illegal crossings for much of the past year. Last month, nearly three in four arrests were of Mexicans, helping to explain why the asylum ban had the most impact in Arizona. U.S. authorities say the seven-day average of daily arrests in the Tucson sector has fallen to less than 600 this week, down from just under 1,200 on June 2.
Border agents in Arizona have been severely tested since late 2022 by hard-to-deport nationalities – first from Cuba and then Mauritania, Guinea and Senegal. Many cross near Lukeville, about four hours by bus to a major processing center in Tucson.
Many Mexicans cross illegally much closer to Tucson, in Nogales, Arizona, some scaling a wall with ladders made from material at a seat belt factory on the Mexican side to try to disappear into homes and businesses within seconds. Others hand themselves over to border agents to seek asylum, entering through gaps in the wall that are being filled. On Tuesday, a group of 49 predominantly Mexican migrants waited for agents.
Some are taken to the Border Patrol station in Nogales, where they can be detained for six days if they express fears of being deported under the asylum suspension and seek similar forms of protection that would allow them to remain but are much more demanding. high level, such as the United Nations Convention against Torture.
Most are taken to a cluster of giant white tents near Tucson International Airport, which opened in April 2021 for unaccompanied children. Today it has space for 1,000 people, including single adults and families, who sleep on foam mattresses or raised beds.
On Tuesday, about a dozen people who said they feared deportation sat on benches in a cavernous room to hear instructions about the screening interview, which includes a four-hour period to call lawyers or others to inquire. prepare. They were then directed to one of 16 soundproof telephone booths.
The Tucson processing center didn’t even conduct tests before Biden’s asylum was suspended. That has resulted in the release of more migrants with orders to appear in U.S. immigration court, a practice he has declined in recent weeks. Screenings carried out by asylum officers take around 90 minutes over the phone.
Many migrants who fail interviews are deported to Nogales, a sprawling city in the Mexican state of Sonora, and end up in San Juan Bosco, where a giant fan in an old chapel offers relief from the scorching summer heat.
Francisco Loureiro, who runs the shelter in a squalid hillside neighborhood, said word has spread among Mexicans that they will be deported if they turn themselves in to asylum-seeking agents and that more people will try to avoid capture. He said a deported migrant accepted an offer from a smuggler outside the shelter on Tuesday to try to pass through undetected.
Ruiz said he did not have the opportunity to explain to an asylum officer that he feared returning to Mexico due to cartel violence. “They were very direct questions, yes or no. You couldn’t explain why you were scared,” she said.
Mayorkas said complaints about screening predate Biden’s June order.
“I have confidence in our agents and officers that they are complying with the guidelines, that our guidelines are strong and that we have expertise for individuals who express fear,” he said.
Anahi Sandoval, 30, said she tried to avoid capture after crossing the border in Nogales and was abandoned by her smuggler in the desert. She said she fled Chiapas after she and her husband, who owned a door and window company, refused to be extorted by gangs; her husband was killed and she left her daughter with a relative.
“Colombians pass, but Mexicans don’t,” said Sandoval, who failed the screening interview. “It makes me angry.”
Araceli Martinez, 32, said she fears returning home with her 14-year-old daughter to a physically abusive husband, but no one asked her and she didn’t know she needed to ask until it was on a bus to Mexico. Previously, Border Patrol agents had to ask migrants if they feared returning home. Under the new rules, migrants must ask questions spontaneously or express obvious signs of distress, such as crying.
Martinez was eager to spread a message to others: “People come here thinking there is asylum, but there isn’t.”
